Pittsburg Landing, March 26th, 1862Leander,
I wrote you and James letters yesterday and Sarah Ann today. So you will not expect any news from me tonight. I received fifty postage stamps from you today. You would have to have seen me open them to know how much I value them, and not only me, but mess no. one. We was out of stamps and are still out of money. I rather think the whole Reg is strapped, except Hugh and McKee. I think Capt has six bits and Hugh three bits. Speaking of bills, puts me in mind of the Tennessee women bringing in corn dodgers and chickens for sale and asking a bill or [undecipherable] for their stuff. I have not seen but one or two girls since I landed at Savannah that was anyways near passable. They are rather good looking, but somehow they are all pot gutted, young and old. Why it is so, I cannot tell. Capt and I have talked of it several times, but cannot come to any satisfactory conclusion. Capt has been under the weather for a few days, but is getting all right again. He had the diarrhea till it made him a little weak. He knows a little better how to sympathize with the boys now. He has been so healthy, he did not know how it felt to be a little sick. McKee is by far the best Capt in our Reg. I do not say so because he belongs to Co. C., I say it because I know it is so. I will give you some of my reasons for saying so much for Capt. He is always with us. He nearly always eats with us, has ever since we left the point and most of the time there. He has always went with his Co. where they go. In marches, he never steals a horse to ride, but wades mud and water as his boys do. At Ft Donelson he did more for the wounded than all the other officers in the Reg excepting Major, and he will joke and talk to the very lowest private in the Co. These may look like small things to you, but it is more than I can say for any other Capt in our Reg. And yet he has his faults. I sometimes think he curses some of the boys where he has very little cause to, and sometimes pretty hard on a sick, and especially home sick fellow.
©2006 C.S. Parkinson
